Journal article
Planck early results. III. First assessment of the Low Frequency Instrument in-flight performance
A Mennella, M Bersanelli, RC Butler, A Curto, F Cuttaia, RJ Davis, J Dick, M Frailis, S Galeotta, A Gregorio, H Kurki-Suonio, CR Lawrence, S Leach, JP Leahy, S Lowe, D Maino, N Mandolesi, M Maris, E Martínez-González, PR Meinhold Show all
Astronomy and Astrophysics | EDP SCIENCES S A | Published : 2011
Abstract
The scientific performance of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) after one year of in-orbit operation is presented. We describe the main optical parameters and discuss photometric calibration, white noise sensitivity, and noise properties. A preliminary evaluation of the impact of the main systematic effects is presented. For each of the performance parameters, we outline the methods used to obtain them from the flight data and provide a comparison with pre-launch ground assessments, which are essentially confirmed in flight. © ESO, 2011.
Grants
Awarded by Science and Technology Facilities Council
Funding Acknowledgements
Planck (http://www.esa.int/Planck) is a project of the European Space Agency (ESA) with instruments provided by two scientific consortia funded by ESA member states (in particular the lead countries France and Italy), with contributions from NASA (USA) and telescope reflectors provided by a collaboration between ESA and a scientific consortium led and funded by Denmark.r Planck is too large a project to allow full acknowledgement of all contributions by individuals, institutions, industries, and funding agencies. The main entities involved in the mission operations are as follows. The European Space Agency operates the satellite via its Mission Operations Centre located at ESOC (Darmstadt, Germany) and coordinates scientific operations via the Planck Science Office located at ESAC (Madrid, Spain). Two Consortia, comprising around 50 scientific institutes within Europe, the USA, and Canada, and funded by agencies from the participating countries, developed the scientific instruments LFI and HFI, and continue to operate them via Instrument Operations Teams located in Trieste (Italy) and Orsay (France). The Consortia are also responsible for scientific processing of the acquired data. The Consortia are led by the Principal Investigators: J.-L. Puget in France for HFI (funded principally by CNES and CNRS/INSU-IN2P3) and N. Mandolesi in Italy for LFI (funded principally via ASI). NASA's US Planck Project, based at JPL and involving scientists at many US institutions, contributes significantly to the efforts of these two Consortia. In Finland, the Planck LFI 70 GHz work was supported by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes). This work was also supported by the Academy of Finland, CSC, and DEISA (EU).